"You Are Different This Time"

On thresholds, and people and places that witness our becoming

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There is a moment, driving east, when the rolling hills appear — filled with lush trees in all shades of green.

Layers of blue fill the horizon, lakes and rivers come into view, and the dryness of the high plains drifts off into the distance.

Something in me begins to remember this ancient land.

It is not a conscious memory. Only, my hair starts to curl, my skin’s cracks disappear, and my face — eyes closed and laced with a smile — lifts to the sky to be soaked by the rain.

~

I have made this drive and crossed this threshold many times over the years. These hills that once stood as tall mountains have held my becoming.

Passing through this doorway this time feels different, though.

Because I am different.

There are family members who have held the frame of this doorway during these years, serving as witness.

“You are different this time,” one of these threshold keepers mirrors to me.

“There is a peace in you.”

“Yes,” I nod back, with gratitude.

~

Grief does something to a person.

It brings you to the holy place of undoing, unraveling, to the core of the earth, where the roots begin — if you let it.

Only in the deepest descent is where this kind of peace can be found.

It comes as a reckoning.

Parts of the past return to be found.
Others leave, and only live on as story.
Some appear in the rearview mirror, briefly — as a reminder of how long the journey has been — before fading into the distance.

The future steadies into view.

~

In my parents’ home, my mother has decorated everything with memories of the ocean, one of her favorite places to be. Sailboats and lighthouses and sea shells.

When I sit on the couch and look around, it is as if I am seeing it all for the first time.

I giggle with the knowing that she has somehow held this memory of the future for all these years.

Like the compass on the wall was somehow always holding the energy of true north, and the lighthouses were always leading me home.

I gaze into the main painting on the wall — a lighthouse with a rocky shore, crashing waves, and a sunset sky, and it’s as if I see myself sitting on the stones at the ocean’s edge.

The wind on the waves calls out to me, as if She has always been waiting —

For this time to come.

“I have missed your humming,” She says. “And the way your voice echoes across the breeze.”

“Will you sing? Will you always remember to sing?”

I close my eyes, breathe deep, and take in the scene.

In this current moment and time of the Now, I hear the birds chirping through the door I have left open.

I look outside at the clouds and rain and all shades of green.

I glance back at the sunset sky in the painting, and the crests of the waves crashing.

I look behind me and notice a nautical map that’s probably been hanging on the wall for as long as my parents have been in this house. (Update: My mother says she has had this hanging, even in the house I grew up in - in Michigan.) For the first time, I see what it is a map of, and I laugh and shake my head. The cosmic joke continues.

Can’t make this up, I think to myself.

“Can’t make this sh*t up” is a phrase I have become quite familiar with over the years, and especially in this season of my life.

(If you have followed my journey, or read my most recent post before this one, “The Ocean Is Calling And I Must Go,” you know I am headed next to the ocean…)

As I lay my head back on the couch, I remember that I have not yet answered the wind.

“Yes, I will sing,” I whisper.

“I will always sing.”

~~~

May this find you in your own season of becoming, and may it meet you in the stillness, in the whisper of knowing, in the laughter of the cosmos.

All the Love,
~Caryn

The wildflower in me cheers on the wildflower in you. ❁

~~~

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